Wannabe in My Gang? (24 page)

He told Charlie not to worry about his travelling expenses as he would send Charlie two airline tickets and meet him and Field at the airport. ‘It’s easier and quicker to fly,’ he said. Charlie couldn’t believe his luck and the words ‘sort out some business’ rang in his head. These weren’t the sort of fools who had sat at the visiting table with Reggie and Ronnie, talking about security companies, one-armed bandits and dodgy car deals. These people had serious money, money that Charlie desperately needed.

Ronnie and Charlie flew to Newcastle and were picked up by Jack and Ken at the airport in a Range Rover and driven to a five-star hotel. Jack then introduced Ronnie and Charlie to Brian, another of his friends. As usual, Jack proved to be a faultless host, plying Charlie and Ronnie Field with drinks. Charlie couldn’t remember the number of free Scotch and Cokes he drank. In his inebriated state he felt he had to live up to his gangster image and once more began to brag about his drug contacts. He said he and Field could supply Jack with five kilos of cocaine every two weeks for two years, adding that the first exchange would take place in Croydon the following week. The truth of the matter was he didn’t have enough money in his back pocket for a shandy, let alone enough money to buy five kilos of quality cocaine.

The following few weeks were an emotional period for Charlie. It would have been his son’s 45th birthday on 3 July and Charlie’s 70th on the 9th. His friends in Birmingham insisted on having a party for him, but money was still an issue for Charlie and he didn’t think he would be able to go. He didn’t have a car, couldn’t afford the train fare or even two £15 economy coach tickets for himself and his partner Judy. Jack rang him the Sunday before the party and Charlie asked him if he could borrow £500.

Jack told him that it wouldn’t be a problem. He immediately put the money in a jiffy bag and sent it by registered post. The Geordie’s generosity totally convinced Charlie that he was onto something good.

When Charlie and Judy arrived at the same hotel Charlie had previously stayed at, they were told the manager was aware of Charlie’s financial situation and therefore there would be no charge. Charlie was surprised to find that Brian and Jack were also staying there. As usual, the champagne and drink flowed freely all night for Charlie. His ‘friends’ also presented him with a gold-plated cigarette lighter and Charlie appeared lost for words.

On Saturday, 20 July, Jack rang Charlie, asking him to tell Ronnie Field to contact him. Four days later, he rang again to tell Charlie that he would be in London the next day. He asked Charlie to book him into the Selsdon Park Hotel in Croydon. Without thinking, Charlie did so. Ronnie Field and Bobbie Gould were due to hand over two kilos of cocaine to the Geordies at the hotel in return for £63,000 and Charlie had just roped himself into the conspiracy by booking the room on their behalf. On the day Jack arrived, Charlie had been working on a book called
Me and My Brothers
at the home of Robin McGibbon, the co-author, near Bromley in Kent. Charlie received a telephone call from his partner, Judy, who told him that Jack wanted him to pop into the hotel and have a drink with him, Brian, Ronnie Field and Bobbie Gould.

Charlie didn’t really want to go, but as he was passing the hotel anyway and the Geordies had been so good to him, he decided he would have a quick whisky. As had happened previously, Jack tried desperately to get Charlie to drink more but he insisted on having just a single whisky. Charlie explained that he couldn’t stop as he wanted to get back to Judy and his children.

The exchange did not happen that night but the following Wednesday the deal was back on. Charlie was not present when the drugs were delivered, as he had driven to Kent again to work on his book and afterwards went to pick up Judy from work. Charlie was in good spirits and looking forward to the release of his book, which he thought might help ease his financial worries. At 7 p.m. that night, Judy had cooked dinner and Charlie settled down to watch television when there was a firm knock at the door.

Judy answered and came back into the lounge followed by four policemen – two uniformed and two plain-clothed detectives. As they came in, two other detectives came in through the patio doors. They gestured for Charlie to get up and then informed him that he was being arrested on drugs charges. Charlie was ordered upstairs and the police searched his bedroom. When the search was completed at 9 p.m., Charlie was asked if he wanted to change out of his tracksuit bottoms and into something more appropriate. Judy asked, ‘Are they taking you away, Charlie?’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘they’ve arrested me.’

Charlie kissed her goodbye and then walked to the waiting police car. The car took him to Ilford police station in Essex where he was put in the cells.

At 10 p.m. that evening, Judy was allowed to see Charlie. She brought him fresh clothes as he had been warned that he would be appearing in court the following morning. Charlie asked if he could have a few moments alone with Judy and was told he could spend five minutes alone with her in an interview room. As Judy entered, Charlie stood up and put his arms around her. He said, ‘I’m sorry, darling,’ and, almost crying, whispered to her, ‘That lovely guy, Jack, he’s an undercover policeman. He’s been tape-recording me talking about cocaine.’

It must have been obvious to the undercover policemen that Charlie Kray was no big-time drug dealer. In my view, it cannot be right that police officers can use a man’s son’s funeral to infiltrate his circle of friends. It is equally distasteful that police officers using taxpayers’ money can spend large amounts of cash on presents, hotels, aeroplane flights, champagne and get you so drunk you would say anything they want. I felt deeply sorry for Charlie. The following morning, the deception in full was outlined to Charlie by his solicitor.

Charlie was told that Jack, George and Brian – his Geordie ‘friends’ – were all in fact undercover police officers and had been taping all the conversations that had taken place over a two-month period. Charlie knew that he had been snared by their elaborate trap as he had said incriminating things about drugs, not because he was able to supply them, but because he thought that these people would continue to buy him drinks and supply him with money so long as he acted out the part of Kray the Gangster. Later that day, Charlie appeared at Redbridge Magistrates’ Court in Ilford. The shoes he was wearing as he stood in the dock had holes in them. He had a ten-pound watch on his wrist and not a penny in his pocket, yet, on the front page of
The Sun
was the headline ‘Charlie Kray in £78 million cocaine sting’.

The police estimation of the value of the drugs he had promised to supply was a little more charitable. Charlie Kray, Ronnie Field and Bobbie Gould were each charged with conspiracy to supply three kilos of cocaine worth £63,000 and conspiracy to supply 520 kilos of cocaine. Charlie and Field were also accused of conspiracy to supply 1,000 Ecstasy tablets worth £20,000. The magistrate refused all three men bail.

Charlie, not surprisingly, was sent to Belmarsh, a top-security prison situated in Woolwich, south-east London. In case anyone missed the point that police had arrested one of the most dangerous gangsters in the country, armed police in flak jackets manned the rooftops of the magistrates court for the next hearing. Charlie Kray was driven there from Belmarsh Prison at high speed, with police motorcyclists riding ahead to clear the traffic. The only part of the circus that was missing was the deafening klaxons and the circling helicopters that accompanied him, his brothers and their so-called firm to the Old Bailey in 1969.

Charlie’s trial was set for later that year but in the meantime, he was told he would have to remain in the high-security unit at Belmarsh with IRA hit men, PLO terrorists, Yardie killers and various other murderers. The notoriety of the name Kray had done Charlie many favours over the years, but he was soon to learn that it could be a burden too. The jurors who were to sit in judgement of Charlie were given round-the-clock protection as the judge felt they might be got at. If you are a juror attending a trial and armed police are assigned to protect you, it is reasonable to assume that the man in the dock is no angel. If you reach that conclusion, then you are possibly pre-judging the defendant, something that jurors are not supposed to do. With the odds already stacked against him, Charlie Kray began his trial at a distinct disadvantage.

Despite the damning tapes of him boasting about drugs, Charlie did have a defence. An undercover policeman had infiltrated his son’s funeral in order to be introduced to Charlie so that he could subsequently be seduced into committing a crime. Believing the undercover police officers to be wealthy drug dealers, Charlie and Ronnie Field had agreed to pretend to be wealthy dealers themselves in order to get some money out of them. It wasn’t the best of defences, but being a ponce, however distasteful, isn’t illegal and the truth was the only defence Charlie had.

Charlie was defended by Jonathon Goldberg QC. In his opening address to the jury, Mr Goldberg said he was facing a unique difficulty in his career. He was defending someone called Kray before a jury under round-the-clock surveillance.

He told the jury not to fall into the trap of thinking the additional security measures being employed around the court were in place because the defendant was a top-class gangster, despite the fact the defendant had been held in prison under double-A security, the highest possible. He said the security measures being used concerning Kray were merely part of the hype surrounding the case.

It is nothing other than the fact his name is Kray. Charlie Kray is nothing more than a pathetic, skint old fool who lives on handouts from pals. Because of the hand-to-mouth existence he has been forced to lead, he has become an expert at bull. He has been doing it all his life, it is the only way he has been able to earn a living because nobody would give him a job. You’ll hear that the defendant has never been a drug dealer in any way, shape or form. Have you ever heard of a drugs baron that lives like a pauper, cadging £50 here and £20 there? He doesn’t even have a bank account. All you have in the dock is a charming but gullible old man that doesn’t know his limitations, who does not recognise where his charm and bull ends and where the reality of life begins. The undercover officers should be ashamed of themselves for carrying out a deeply offensive operation.

With the help of a seemingly bottomless expense account, [the officers] acted as devious
agents provocateurs
, even using Gary Kray’s death to infiltrate his father Charlie’s circle of friends. No doubt it was a feather in the cap of several of the officers to have arrested the last of the Kray brothers. They targeted Charlie Kray. They lured a foolish and vulnerable old man with no money into a carefully prepared web; they made all the running.

The tapes you will hear of Kray talking about tonnes of cocaine and millions of pounds are nothing more than absurd exaggeration. The police must have realised that Kray was not a big-time criminal with wealth behind him, otherwise why would one of the undercover officers have given him £50 for nothing? If you genuinely believe someone is a drug baron, you don’t insult him by giving him that sort of money.

During the trial it was revealed that undercover police work, although not the best-paid profession in the world, has its perks. Brian, one of the undercover police officers, was alleged to have spent the night with a woman named Michelle Hamdouchi at her home after Charlie’s birthday party. It was also alleged that she turned up at the aptly named Swallow Hotel in the early hours, where she performed oral sex on him in his room. Whilst performing his public duty, Brian had allegedly kept asking Michelle if ‘Charlie Kray could come up with the cocaine’. Nobody is certain what, if anything, came out of Hamdouchi’s mouth. The undercover officer strenuously denied that he had been involved in any inappropriate behaviour with the lady.

Hamdouchi was understandably embarrassed, but she admitted she had performed a sex act on Brian at the Swallow Hotel. Brian and his colleague Jack did admit that whilst they were waiting for Michelle to come to the hotel (for whatever reason), they had been drinking champagne at the bar with Spice Girl, Victoria Adams (later Beckham), who coincidentally happened to be in the hotel. (And they say police work is tough!)

The trial dragged on for eight weeks and eventually the prosecutor rose to give his closing speech. ‘The defence claim the police were cunning and devious and should be ashamed of themselves, but it was Kray’s behaviour that was shameful. If Kray suspected that Jack’s overture in Birmingham was all about drugs, all he had to say was, that’s not my game, I’m going off to drink with my mates. But he didn’t, he chose to remain and talk about drugs.’

Mr Goldberg, for Charlie, said in his final address to the jury:

An elaborate and expensive operation has been launched by career-hungry police, who sought to put feathers in their caps by arresting this old man. The undercover officers who carried it out lived the life of Riley for two-and-a-half months at the taxpayers’ expense. Bottle after bottle of champagne, £2,000 on booze from a cash and carry, £1,000 on air tickets and a loan to Kray. Rooms for five at a five-star hotel, birthday presents for Kray and Patsy Manning. They were spending money like crazy because they were Kray fishing. Other police officers might say, if this is undercover work, give us some any day of the week. Jack and his pals started to behave like the people they wanted to put away, but the detective screen they have hidden behind is a cloak for their unaccountability. Kray was on tape talking about tonnes of drugs, but where were the drugs?

If the police genuinely believed Kray and Field were into drugs in a big way, why didn’t the police put them under surveillance and catch others in their net too? The reason was that there were forces at work within the police to get Charlie Kray convicted. There was no surveillance because they knew he was bluffing.